If you are gentle with them they think you are afraid.

And when they think you are afraid, watch out, for they will get you.

Just to show you, let me state the one invariable process in a black man's brain when, on his native heath, he encounters a stranger.

His first thought is one of fear.

Will the stranger kill him?
His next thought, seeing that he is not killed, is: Can he kill the stranger?
There was Packard, a Colonial trader, some twelve miles down the coast.